Little scraps

 

    This is heartbreaking stuff - the textile scraps* left with infants at London's Foundling Hospital. Methods of identification and marks of kinship, one half of the piece would be kept by the mother and produced if she ever came back to reclaim her child.

*For the slideshow, click on the semi-obscured words 'The Online Exhibition' to the right of the arrow at the bottom left of that page.

Comments

[Jennifer]

I don't know how they did it, absolutely heartbreaking.

[m]

Somehow fabric tokens seem even more poignant than metal ones, don't they? Maybe because they're less durable, they make you think how little chance there was for these mothers of ever reclaiming their children.

[Elizabeth]

That is so sad - the handwork, embroidery and stitching makes it even sadder. Poor little things, mothers and babies. As Jennifer said, "absolutely heartbreaking".

[Fran H-B]

Last year I visited the Foundling Museum to view this exhibition. The room full of these hearbreaking scraps is only a small proportion of the whole collection. When one realises the vast numbers of desperate mother's who resorted to giving their children up, it is harrowing. An exhibition which will stay with me for a long time.

[Karen]

I remember seeing an article about these scraps, and the exhibition, in the December issue of Crafts magazine - heartbreaking it is. I can't even begin to think about how those mothers must have felt.

[Merilyn]

So sad its hard to even imagine how those mothers felt.Have you read Selvedge Magazine issue 36. They have a very good article about the Foundling Hospital.

[Erika]

I am reading Gillian Pugh's "London's Lost Children", a history of the Foundling Hospital, at this very time. It is stodgily written but full of the answers to one's possible questions.

[Passionate Blogger]

'The pieces of fabric in the ledgers were kept, with the expectation that they could be used to identify the child if it was returned to its mother.' So heartwrenching.... filled with hope.